You should watch all six seasons of this hugely underrated show now

Now that we are a few years past the COVID lockdowns, we can admit that although rare, there were some tiny silver linings. Many of you made the best of the unfortunate opportunity by becoming an expert baker or learning a language. I, personally, did all my self-improvement in one area only: drastically increasing the number of TV shows I have seen.

One of the few clear beneficiaries of the COVID situation was a group I like to call “TV shows that you’d heard about vaguely but would probably never have gotten around to watching unless you had to stay inside your home for ages.”

America Ferrera as Amy in Superstore.

Superstore is one of those shows for me, and I’m glad I finally delved into it for many reasons. The Justin Spitzer-created show started in 2015, and by the time I tuned in, it was almost wrapped, finishing with season six in 2021. The Germans invented schadenfreude for the niche feeling of finding pleasure in someone else’s misfortune, but we need a word for the specific pleasure of finding a TV show you love, and discovering that six beautiful seasons are waiting for you. For me, it was Superstorenfreude.

Superstore is a workplace comedy. It follows a group of employees at “Cloud 9”, a big Walmart-type department store. There is a sprawling ensemble cast full of zany characters, and the show is filled with silliness. One Halloween episode sees assistant manager Dina (Lauren Ash) interrogating her subservient manager Glenn (played wonderfully by Kids in the Hall alum Mark McKinney) about stolen fruit, and the entire scene is just him trying to sit down in a hot dog costume.

While very funny, what sets Superstore apart for me is that baked into the comedy of the show is the real experience of having to work a shitty job. Most recent popular entertainment about class tends to look at it through the prism of the wealthy and privileged, even if critically.

We like to examine privilege, but only if it’s the rich side with the pretty people and their glossy lives. Most sitcoms do not want to show what it’s actually like to struggle to make ends meet because they also have to try and make you laugh.

Roseanne was a groundbreaking sitcom about a working class family.Credit: ABC

As someone from a deeply working-class background, I know that intertwining the comedy with the struggle is just real life, and I appreciate when it’s depicted. TV shows such as Roseanne, Malcolm in the Middle and Bob’s Burgers understand that for some people, it’s necessary to take the piss to get through the day. As does Superstore.

Because it is almost exclusively set within the store, Superstore allows us to directly look at the complicated interpersonal relationships between low-rung workers, their managers, their manager’s managers, regional managers, and the faceless corporation that only weighs in to make employees’ lives worse.

An episode in the first season sees everyone trapped in the store overnight after Corporate forces them to stay late to hang new store signs (which are virtually identical to the old ones). It shows so well the frustration of being a cog nobody cares about, the powerlessness of having to implement bad ideas nobody discussed with you, and the way this leads to building real relationships with people, some you’d never usually cross paths with.

We talk and think a lot about diversity now, and the show has an extremely diverse cast in many ways, but it feels organic and familiar. In my experience, low-status or menial jobs are filled with people who have not come from privilege or are kept out of privilege because of their identity.

Cleaning toilets alongside you are people from poor backgrounds and limited education, students, single mothers, the chronically ill, immigrants whose education is often dismissed, old ladies forced out of retirement, and sometimes the weirdos who find it difficult to get hired elsewhere. I’m not saying which of these I am.

The fact that Superstore is filled with this broad range of people, united by concern about paying their bills and keeping their jobs, means the show can represent issues from many different perspectives, and it doesn’t hold back. There are storylines about unionism and fair pay, an episode about the ethics of selling birth control and guns, and racism, none uncomplicated or easily solved.

One running storyline is about Mateo, a gay Filipino employee who finds out he is undocumented; the show then goes on to deal with raids from the US immigration police, as well as deportation.

In season four, manager Dina and employee Amy both go into labour on the same day, giving birth in different hospitals. With sharp humour, the show exposes the blatant inequality in their healthcare. At one point an exhausted Amy complains: “I want to be in the hospital where only rich white people go! I want to feel uncomfortable that I’m the only brown person there.”

Perhaps easily dismissed as a light-hearted workplace comedy, this width and depth of experience is what makes Superstore so underrated. It does not let you off the hook easily. It’s a show that would like to make you laugh, but it’s also actually interested in the real lives of employees, the injustices of the day-to-day, and the influence of corporations and capitalism. It’s produced many seasons of subtle class examination, without the critical attention of something like The White Lotus. And vitally, Superstore never sacrifices the jokes. It’s funny, comforting, a bingeable watch. It just has extra qualities as well, the genuine and true-to-life moments that make you care more about the people making you laugh. I highly recommend getting yourself a dose of Superstorenfreude.

Superstore is available to stream on Binge and Stan. Stan is owned by Nine, owner of this masthead.

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